89816-continue-the-bot-wars-do
Content ---- ---- ---- Will do. In many ways this is the price of being the new popular game on the block :/ That doesn't make it less of a pain in the butt for users though. Edited July 2, 2014 by CRB_Gaffer | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- I seem to see a lot of people who "get hacked" and complain "didn't know" about authentication systems. Something that may be good to implement is when logging into the game, have a pop-up stating "You do not have an authenticator on this account. In order to increase your security, please consider using one of these free options" and have a link to a guide for phone apps / computer apps. That way NO ONE can have the excuse of "I didn't know about it" and becomes more widely known. I know you have advertised and give rewards and everything is in patch notes or in the top corner of character select, but please make it BLATANTLY OBVIOUS for everyone that it exists, gets bonuses, is simple, and prevents stolen accounts. We can shout until we are blue in the face, but until something goes wrong people won't care. Make it more obvious, more of a nuisance to not have one than it is to have one. | |} ---- ---- They already have the yellow Announcement in top left corner saying to get an Authenticator dont they? | |} ---- ---- Using the authenticator? | |} ---- Should that even matter? If security is "working as intended", there really shouldn't be any need for some added security layer. Additionally; I changed my password once the account servers got back online. It's now even longer and complex. Though about 10 minutes ago my account got suspended for 168 hours. ...So I just manage to get my account back, change the password, I wait for a reply from Carbine to the mail I sent (apart from the automated one) and then my account gets turned off. Yeah... A loss for words atm.... | |} ---- So no, then. Should making the most of the security options provided to you matter? Yes it should. You wouldn't have had this happen had you bothered to use it. It sucks to get suspended for something you didn't even do, but man that authenticator can really prevent a lot of problems for almost no hassle whatsoever. | |} ---- ---- ---- Your own system can be as secure as Fort Knox, if you're off posting on 'teh sexxy ladies dot com' or 'fans who get hacked - general forum dot com'... then its those places that get hacked and their database fed into the RMT company... which then feeds that data back to various online games. One of them could have been hacked a year ago... and it happens that you're down to the bottom of the sticky note list of passwords, and have gone back up to the top to re-use an old one... that has been sitting in the RMT database for a while now... waitng for you to re-use it... | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- This was my experience as well - I saw 2 bots TRYING but their attempted teleports were failing as they kept rubber banding back to the same post and the other one I saw was not able to mine due to being killed by mobs. Reported both but I was able to get pretty much every node I saw without issue. Hell, my only competition was another Domi who kept jokingly telling me to "Get off his mining lawn" xD Keep up the great work! | |} ---- You are making your post 'couse your security measures are obviously not working as intended. With all the things you mentioned (and as we know everyone tells nothing but the truth on internet) you lost your account anyways (or so you say, for all I know you used lvling service). Whatever you are doing is obviously not working. Step back a bit and think about this, the only person that you can be angry at is yourself. It sucks, but it's true. Your refusal about getting authenticator is simply ignorance and borderline insulting to everyone taking the time to read this. I say borderline insulting 'couse you are simply stirring drama and wasting everyones time instead of taking a simple step to prevent this from happening. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Using winauth myself. That and the google authenticator for PC. @warchiefr: You need incentive? I was getting a bot killed for fun. It would just run up and swipe at me, so it was pretty simple to drag it to an elite, which it would tag. A few runs on those, and it would die off pretty quick. Still, the bots can, and will, get more complex. As long as Carbine go after results though- all bots need results. Make some internal leaderboards for kills in each zone, time spent fighting in each zone, harvests in each zone, etc etc.... players can't compete, so bots will give themselves up easily. A bot can easily slaughter in a zone, but players will get bored much more quickly. Then a GM goes down the list, spectating the players one by one, so if one is an actual player, they just get ignored, while the bots get banned. | |} ---- ---- Quantity may initially go down, but will pick up again as players realize there's money to be had in gathering again. You'll actually want to look for price increases, maybe 20%. | |} ---- How many times you can do it before bored? I mean when you see bot hundredth time you think - oh f..k it- tired to report. When you have incentive (month free subscription for example) you happy every time when see bot. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Your not using 2-factor authentication I see. If you never changed your password after the format that would explain everything, I realize you did so recently, but your outline of what you did indicates you didn't change the password after you patched Windows. You also didn't change the registered email address. This indicates your email might be compromised. They can easily enough just reset the password if thats the case. | |} ---- I thought of one solution. If you are near somebody else when they mine, anyone near the mine ( 2-3 meters perhaps ) will get part of the node. The sad news is I saw a one running around tonight. I wasn't able to catch his name before he moved to the next node. Perhaps limit solution if you use your tool for 1 second. | |} ---- Carbines security is fine. Your security as evident of being compromise both before and after a full format seems to indicate its not. | |} ---- ---- Actually want to look quanitity lots in auc. Around 40% less bots = lowest lots in auc. I chose for myself survalist , and you know what auc never have lots more 2k. Thats mean real players can put 500- 3k max. You can say anything like : we help ppl alot. And i must check your words. Maybe just maybe no one get a ban. I must be sure. | |} ---- Can't fight bots until they actually show up which doesn't happen until a game launches. It's all fine and good to say that this should have been been in the game from the get-go but unless you are privy to both the inner workings of how Wildstar and Carbine operates and all of the methods used by botters, no one is qualified to state what is and is not basic functionality. | |} ---- What sort of non-sense is this? It sounds like your trying to defend people who bot and teleport around the map stealing nodes from people who actually do everything on their own. Take pride in what you post. Make actual sense and don't make silly spelling mistakes. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Screencaps have helped me nab a couple names. As far as my personal experience, bots seem to be down a ton on my server. This morning I was able to farm plants to my heart's content. Normally I'd rejoice if I came across ten while doing dailies. Today I was able to go into normal zones and just leap from node to node : ) | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Thanks keep up the work, never ending fight. Seen the same guy most likely so ya at least they know they have to change what they are doing. Never ending fight it seems in games today. | |} ---- ---- ---- I've been considering something like this in Wilderun on Myrcalus. The zone is constantly swept clean of mining nodes and thanks to the high enemy density I don't always have the chance to nab a screen shot. I managed to report one bot but I know there are others. While not quite the same, there's an addon called One Click Bot Report that lets you file a report with a simple command line in the chat window. All you need is to spell the player's name right and you're done. | |} ---- ---- Or have them targetted and keybind /ocr. BAM! Reported bot. | |} ---- ---- Thanatal is me, and as others have mentioned, you can get an add-on called One-Click Report. So I'd just stealth by a node and type /ocr, and as soon as I saw a bot I clicked on them and hit enter. Boom, instant report! Now that I'm in Malgrave it's looking like I'll be spending some time reporting botters here too. But I know it's time well spent as Carbine is doing an outstanding job of taking action against the farmers. So thank you to Carbine for all of your hard work. You've made an incredible game, and you continuously make it better. And if we all do our part, and take a little time to help out, we can keep this botting horde in check. | |} ---- ---- Thanks for the information! | |} ---- ---- It has to do with how their bad person doing unkind things works. My understanding is they exploit how the server handles players at high latency. It's not a simple thing to fix; they could just arbitrarily boot anyone who is above a certain latency threshold, but that would have the side effect of being terrible for ordinary players who have lagspikes. Believe me, behind the scenes they are fighting a technical war against exploiters. We don't see or hear much about it, because the more they make public, the more they give away to the enemy. edited because it's not an exploit and I need to use precise terminology, according to Vicwolf. Edited July 7, 2014 by Finneval | |} ---- ---- You've never actually been involved in catching hackers, have you? | |} ---- It's not an exploit, terminology matters. | |} ---- More like bot slaps. Too slow with all these "wars" with miserable results... | |} ---- ---- ---- Great work mate, us legitimate node-grubbers appreciate the efforts you guys are striving through! One quick question though; I know the legitimacy of botting/hacking claims is something that must make the ban process a hell of a lot harder, so is there any function or soon-to-be-introduced function in which we may supplement our claims with screenshots and/or Fraps videos of these botters? I personally have hundreds of screenshots which show, for example, level 10 players named "gfggfgfgfg" mining Xenocite nodes in Malgrave. Thanks mate, and all the best! :D | |} ---- Get the BotZapper addon. It doesn't screenshot but it puts in map coords, travel speed, name and a bunch of other data into a report that you submit to NC Soft. | |} ---- ---- bait and a flyswatter :) add a nearby respawn so that node is always the nearest one detected when the bot respawns. Use bot behavior against them. add durability to tools maybe. put harmful environment effects around random nodes something player will see and learn to stay away from. one behavior harvesting bots have is they go to resource nodes- use it against them. maybe make nodes that teleport those trying to mine them into some horrible instanced place from which they can never escape. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Not sure where you are that the results aren't noticeable, but on Hazak at least I've gone from having to report every couple seconds to maybe once a night. They definitely are getting results, and incredibly fast as well. Other games took months before even implementing any kind of solution, and the game who shall not be named is still extremely bot friendly, you just can't see them because they're underground or flying around or don't notice them because they're so sophisticated that they're playing much better than your average pug. The are definitely going hard at the problem and deserve some props for that. I only wish that NcSoft had their backs with customer service to match, it's the one thing putting a damper in all the effort made by Carbine. Anyways, good work so far, keep it up. | |} ---- Well, to be honest, some players do have a habit of going around, then seeing something to harvest, and no matter what the heck is in the way, will do their damnedest to get that node! I personally would take the risk of being beat to a pulp, so long as I get my resources! lol | |} ---- ---- Isn't that just the best? I also like to sit there sometimes and watch the prime do his thing. | |} ---- ---- ---- Remember, a lot of these are compromised accounts, so they will be back online once the user re-secures it. I personally place all bots i've reported on my rivals list, and i've seen quite a few people back with authentication and bot free | |} ---- Rift by Trion has the coinlock process | |} ---- Thank you for this .. it's been a major thorn and you just pulled it out I would like to say I've heard this before only from an actual botter they did it ... then when they were caught screamed I was hacked and kept all the skill increases and money that they got (different game) seems to me the best way to get ahead is hack get caught and scream I've been hacked!! while the rest of us got the authenticator on day 1 and never been hacked or pretended to | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- I can't really comment on anything else in your post, but I wanted to comment on this. The "bot scripts" as you call them aren't something we can disable, they aren't using our scripting system to do this kind of thing. They are using external programs that we have no control over that inject things into our game. We are making progress, as you've seen many posts say that the bots have gone down drastically. I've stated before, this will be an ongoing thing, every time we make a change, they will too. It takes us longer to make a change because we have to make sure we don't break other things whenever we do, they don't care if they break the game for others (clearly), so they're way less cautious. And to be honest, there are probably more people working on hacking our game than total engineers we employ. Heck, for all I know, there may be more people trying to hack our game than the entire headcount of the company. We will continue to make progress, they will continue to fight against our progress. We will not stop. We really are making daily progress, and there really are less bots each and every day. You are right though, it really doesn't take many to be really annoying. And that's why we will continue to fight them. Edit: Because I'm already talking about it, many of the botters are hacked account, please make sure your accounts are secure with 2 factor auth, and virus scans and everything else to keep your accounts and computer safe. Use a unique password for WildStar, don't use the same password as you do on web sites. And please, don't visit their sites or buy their stuff, if nobody bought gold from these people, it would stop being profitable, and they would go away. These all seem like really obvious statements, but... *shrug* Edited July 19, 2014 by Pyaray | |} ---- ---- I think the profit group is much smaller than developers like to think. Most hack because it's fun to. Want to take a dump on that stalker's day? Activate the radar so you can still pin point his movements. Tired of your narrow telegraph missing? Turn on bones and lock to the spine. And if you're buying gold from the websites advertised.. you're doing it wrong. It pays to educate yourself. Know what the hackers are using so you can identify when you're going up against one. | |} ---- Honestly I'd rather keep the bots in there isolated from the players than have them mucking around up top. This keeps bots away from the majority of gathering nodes on the overworld and only affects one out of the three gathering professions rather than all of them. Mining wurms are a rare enough occurrence that miners won't feel much of an impact by the bots and the respawn rates in the tunnels are high enough that a bit of gathering can still be done in them. This also gives the added benefit of centralizing bots in a small and confined space that not many legitimate players frequent often which makes it extraordinarily easy for support to track them down. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- i vote +1 to this .. this process slow those tele bot's if they caught they will take time to level if were luck we might caught them while leveling too and yes hacked account can be countered | |} ---- ---- ---- Dont worry your current ability to respond to entire communities (such as the pvp community) in a timely manner will remove that "price" sooner rather then later. | |} ---- You've got certain players in PvP using 30+ charged shots with no CD in 6 seconds, on video, reported and submitted to theredphone@carbinestudios.com That client side hole that's being hacked/exploited needs to be fixed ASAP as whatever is left of the PvP community is losing rating due to it. (along with a lot of people watching to see what happens to see if they continue subbing past Aug 3rd/sabotage drop) Clock's ticking boss. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Is it? Probably not for much longer the way you cats are handling PvP. :) I kid I kid. Well, I kid about kidding. Just kidding. | |} ---- ---- Does that mean you cannot do anything against bots? It seems like people using external programs and get reported by your ticket/report a player options do not have much to worry about as they are still in game. In that case, why shouldn't I do the same : easy level up, easy farm, easy money. Are you that greedy that you don't want to loose a player who is paying for your game whether he/she is using external programs? | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- 3 weeks later, seems you did a good job on the farm bots but whats up with the pvp bots? any news? | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- While this is fine, and understandable in SOME regards, the fact that bots plague the battlegrounds isn't one of those circumstances. Its not hard to figure out who is running BGs hour after hour day after day with all the reports and complaints they get and still allowed to run. Not like its a complicated script they run or some super secret injector code, they log it in it runs in circles or up against a wall so it doesn't get AFK kicked. There are many of us who have reported the same people over and over days on end and they are still running. Its getting pretty bad when people zone into a BG and say "Good Luck guys X, and X, and X are all bots have fun" then take the deserter buff and leave. Between bots and *cupcake* ups in how matchmaking is made for ranked BGs, its not fun or enjoyable in the least. Here's a good idea. instead of working on making spell effects for mobs and polishing the turd items that are really inconsequential, fix the *cupcake*ing issues that are making people leave in droves. I would offer suggestions but seriously, the community is doing enough of your band-aid fixing on UI issues, and help with tech support that should be provided by you, that you guys could get off your asses and maybe do something about the glaring issues you hear from everyone or at least tell us all to *cupcake* up a rope for sport while we wait for our subs to run out. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- I did the same, and from what I read in the party chat within in battleground, others are as well. It really sad when 6 random strangers know right when folks load in who the bots on the team are JUST FROM THEIR NAMES. Plus, it causes other issues: Player A sees bots X, Y, and Z and says "Crap, 3 bots this time, looks like we're in for a hard time guys." Player B says "That's why I'm just going to go afk outside the gate" and does. So true...Last night, I saw a known bot actually pull off a steal and returned the mask through the tunnel in a lvl29 practice Walatiki. I assume that's why it's so hard for Carbine/NCSoft to remove bots from pvp despite multiple ticket submittals on the same 4-5 bots every night. | |} ---- ---- They're not getting banned either because the hurdles to ban them are too damned high, or customer support simply doesn't give a damn. I'm going with the latter. It should not take hundreds of bot reports to ban a bot. If I were in their shoes I could just log in, watch some matches while invisible (don't know if CS can actually do this because I don't even think they have accounts or can log in to the game) and lazily ban twenty bots in half an hour and go to lunch and still get more done on the PvP bot front than CS is. There have been the same bots running for a week now. I get the same rotation of canned BS messages in my inbox, but what I never actually see is action. | |} ---- I have actually seen some Devs in observation mode in Temple. Was not long after game went live, and that first wave of bots came in. You could see their name above them, they looked like ghosts, and seemed to be checking things as they happened. I haven't seen them since though, as it feels like they are giving up with really wanting to make this game the best they can. Well, that is how they are making me feel. They started out assuring us they were doing something. Now, we rarely see any activity from the Devs on the forums. If they really care about the community, they would get on top of keeping us informed as to how they are doing. Not as if I am asking what they are doing, as the hackers/bots would just adapt. But they should make sure to keep us informed more often, as to give us hope that the game will get better. I am losing faith in their ability because there is nothing posted. But that's just my opinion. | |} ---- ---- Yeah, the "please rate our CS" emails make me giggle when I know the exact same bots are still grinding away. | |} ---- All they need do is monitor walatiki because its all the bots queue for as its easy to navigate. Its tragic seeing the same 3 to 4 running round the map. | |} ---- ---- Last night I saw ZERO bots in Walatiki during the same 4 hour time I saw so many bots the previous few days. It's possible Carbine just can't respond as quickly as we'd like on weekends and it just took them until Monday to investigate and ban the bots. Well done Carbine - it pleased me very much to not see those same 4-5 bots I had been seeing for hours on previous nights. | |} ---- ---- ---- I use the /ticket command at least a few times a week. It's fairly easy to report folks that way, compared to other games I've played where you had to open a browser and go to a website to report a cheater or bot. | |} ----